from Laurie Ure, LICSW, Certified Bioenergetic Therapist
The link between traumatic experiences and the body has become more evident in recent years. In addition, awareness has grown that childhood trauma often underlies the problems clients present in therapy, such as depression, anxiety, PTSD, addictions, relationship challenges, and job dissatisfaction. Therapists need the tools to work actively with the body, such as with bioenergetic psychotherapy techniques, to address these issues at the root. Bioenergetic analysis training has proven very useful to therapists looking for an effective body-based support to their work with clients in private practice.
What are the therapy techniques learned in bioenergetic analysis?
Bioenergetic analysis offers a holistic approach incorporating somatic work within psychodynamic psychotherapy. Further, bioenergetic analysis combines thoughtful exploration of the impact of a person’s past with physical movement to go beyond treating symptoms to restoring aliveness and well-being. This integrated method helps people affect lasting transformational change.
Because childhood trauma often occurs in the context of relationships and as part of daily life, people frequently don’t recognize what happened to them as traumatic. Sometimes, people do not even remember significant details of their formative experiences. In addition, children do not know that they did not cause the painful events that happened to them. As adults, people often have lost the connection between these early experiences and their present reality. However, early relational experiences impact a person’s identity, sense of self, relational patterns, and functioning in the world. Further, early relational patterns profoundly influence the body.
How Bioenergetic Techniques Heal Trauma
Did you know? Childhood trauma impacts the fascia and musculature along with the nervous system
We currently have a much greater awareness of the impact of trauma on the nervous system than we ever have. But trauma affects other systems of the body as well. The musculature and fascia develop chronic tension to hold back emotions and expression, which were unacceptable in the childhood environment. For example, when a parent tells a child to stop crying with a message such as: “Big boys don’t cry,” the child halts expression of the emotion by tightening their muscles and holding their breath. If the parent repeats this message regularly, the child learns to tense their muscles chronically, especially whenever they experience the impulse to cry.
The person no longer connects tense muscles with the message of the parent. Most people also have limited awareness of the chronic tension they carry, let alone of the emotions and expressions the tension blocks. Instead, they identify feeling depressed or anxious or symptoms such as difficulty sleeping, low energy, or dissatisfaction in relationships.
Therapy that addresses the underlying causes of unhappiness needs to help people identify and release physical tensions. No amount of talking alone can provide the intervention necessary to release these restrictions. Without releasing the physical tension, the unhappiness will return or persist.
Similarly, physical techniques without psychotherapeutic exploration do not provide sufficient support to create profound change. The structure of psychotherapy offers the opportunity to explore the root causes of chronic tensions. Within a healing relationship, clients can allow emotions previously blocked to flow safely.
How Bioenergetic Psychotherapy Incorporates Physical Movement Into Sessions
Clients need encouragement, movement, understanding, and support to expand their tolerance for the emotions that accompany being fully alive. With therapeutic bioenergetic techniques, we direct clients in physical movements such as standing and bending their knees to heighten their connection to the ground. We use an exercise ball or bioenergetic stool to release tension in the back and open the breathing passage in the front of the body. This exercise enables people to cry more deeply for what they have lost and feel the emptiness and longing for the love they did not get. We incorporate tools for expressing anger safely, which helps to place the blame for their pain on those who hurt them. Sometimes, clients need to rage in a safe way about injustices, which helps build psychological and physical strength.
Video Demonstrations of Bioenergetic Therapy Practices
In the online course Engaging the Body in Psychotherapy: Contemporary Bioenergetic Analysis, offered through the Academy of Therapy Wisdom, we go into greater depth about the theory of bioenergetic analysis and show several demonstrations of working with the body in psychotherapy. One of the bonus tracks about shame, for example, includes a demonstration of a physical exercise for releasing shame and shows the value of expressing anger physically in a safe and contained way.
Working with Personal Boundaries Physically
Clients also need to practice communicating their wishes in relationships in ways often not allowed in their childhood. When a person’s boundaries were crossed repeatedly, they don’t know they have a right to assert their boundaries as adults. Making boundaries physically helps them embody the message of the boundary more directly. Frequently, they experience significant hesitance initially as they practice setting boundaries due to a fear of retribution. They need the support of the therapist to work through this fear.
Offering our clients bioenergetic tools for creaking boundaries allow them to feel their body’s ability to assert boundaries confidently. Furthermore, people need to practice both reaching out for what they need and want and setting limits. These tools form the roots of satisfying relationships. In our online course through the Academy of Therapy Wisdom, you can see demonstrations of ways bioenergetic therapists work with boundaries physically.
We Invite You to Learn More
The trauma that caused physical blocks most frequently developed in a context of fear for survival and well-being, so deep, transformational change takes time and repetition. By working physically through movement combined with recovering expression, expanding capacity for feeling, and seeking to understand what happened, bioenergetic analysis methods offer an ideal amalgam for growth.
Bioenergetic therapy aims beyond alleviating trauma symptoms, guiding clients toward feeling more alive, experiencing more pleasure, and having more satisfying relationships. Our comprehensive online course includes five teaching modules with lectures, discussion, and demonstrations, eight recorded group teaching sessions, and twelve bonus tracks with interviews, dialogues, and added teachings. Learn more on the Contemporary Bioenergetic Analysis course page.
